Admissibility in Games1

Suppose that each player in a game is rational, each player thinks the other players are rational, and so on. Also, suppose that rationality is taken to incorporate an admissibility requirement—that is, the avoidance of weakly dominated strategies. Which strategies can be played? We provide an epistemic framework in which to address this question. Specifically, we formulate conditions of rationality and mth‐order assumption of rationality (RmAR) and rationality and common assumption of rationality (RCAR). We show that (i) RCAR is characterized by a solution concept we call a “self‐admissible set”; (ii) in a “complete” type structure, RmAR is characterized by the set of strategies that survive m+1 rounds of elimination of inadmissible strategies; (iii) under certain conditions, RCAR is impossible in a complete structure.     

Paternal Incarceration and Support for Children in Fragile Families

High U.S. incarceration rates have motivated recent research on the negative effects of imprisonment on later employment, earnings, and family relationships. Because most men in jail and prison are fathers, a large number of children may be placed at considerable risk by policies of incarceration. This article examines one dimension of the economic risk faced by children of incarcerated fathers: the reduction in the financial support that they receive. We use a population-based sample of urban children to examine the effects of incarceration on this support. Both cross-sectional and longitudinal regressions indicate that formerly incarcerated men are less likely to contribute to their families, and those who do contribute provide significantly less. The negative effects of incarceration on fathers’ financial support are due not only to the low earnings of formerly incarcerated men but also to their increased likelihood to live apart from their children. Men contribute far less through child support (formal or informal) than they do when they share their earnings within their household, suggesting that the destabilizing effects of incarceration on family relationships place children at significant economic disadvantage.     

Community-led initiatives for climate adaptation and mitigation

ABSTRACT

Planning for climate change is complex. There is some uncertainty about how quickly the climate will change and what the anticipated localised effects will be. There are also governance questions, for instance, who has the mandate to make decisions around the management of collective resources (like council infrastructure) and private property. Underlying these questions are issues of justice, equity and agency – who pays for the costs of adaptation and mitigation, and how do decision-makers engage with communities when what is ultimately needed is transformational socio-economic change? We use a case study in Te Awa Kairangi – Lower Hutt, Wellington, to show how a community initiative called Common Unity Project Aotearoa (CUPA) is fostering everyday practices of adaptation and mitigation amongst people who have traditionally had limited participation in more formal planning processes. We use the example of CUPA to demonstrate the significance of local community-led development initiatives for adapting to a changing climate. We argue that local government engagement with people around climate change cannot be separated from broader community development and wellbeing initiatives, and needs to be understood as longer term processes, rather than one-off project consultations.     

Sexual Health Interventions for Black Women in the United States: A Systematic Review of Literature

Objective: The purpose of this systematic review was to identify and evaluate approaches used in sexual health interventions targeting Black women in the United States. Methods: We conducted a review of 15 sexual health intervention studies for Black women published between January 2000 and May 2017 in the United States. Results: Each intervention focused on HIV/sexually transmitted infection prevention, incorporated an asset and deficit-based approach, primarily used individual-level assets, and was effective in achieving the stated sexual health-related outcomes. Conclusions: Comprehensive sexual health interventions require further development and refinement to include more community and institutional-level assets to improve long-term sustainable change and empower Black women.     

‘Each one teach one’ visualising black intellectual life in Handsworth beyond the epistemology of ‘white sociology’

ABSTRACT

Handsworth, a suburb in north-west Birmingham, became an important generative epistemic location that produced a number of contested discourses on race and racism in Britain during the 1970s and early 1980s. Using archival sources, this article will focus on Handsworth as an important epistemic space where white sociological studies on ‘race relations’ converged and diverged with the counter-hegemonic political activism of the African Caribbean Self-Help Organisation (ACSHO). This group of young Black working class Pan-Africanists in Handsworth were the coordinating committee for a national delegation of activists who attended the Sixth Pan African Congress in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania in 1974. Their activism in Handsworth was further captured by the photographer, Vanley Burke. The photography of Burke and his archive not only engages with the politics of creating alternative sites of knowledge production, they also enable us to map, trace and reconstruct some of these important sites of Black intellectual life in Britain.     

Risk and protective factors in problem gambling: an examination of psychological resilience

Psychological resilience – successful adaptation when faced with adversity – is a product of the balance of risk and protective factors relevant to an outcome. This study examined if protective factors (perceived resilience; mindfulness; grit; self-efficacy) explained variance in problem gambling tendencies (assessed with the Problem Gambling Severity Index) beyond the HEXACO personality traits (honesty-humility, emotionality, extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, openness to experience) and risk factors for problem gambling (gender; age; socio-economic status; high frequency gambling behaviour; harsh unpredictable childhood environments; sensation-seeking; impulsivity; self-control; stress). This study used a crowdsourced community sample (n = 469) recruited from Amazon Mechanical Turk. Bivariate analyses showed that risk factors and some HEXACO traits (especially honesty-humility) were associated with problem gambling issues. Among protective factors, only trait mindfulness showed a bivariate association with problem gambling issues. Somewhat surprisingly, regression analyses revealed that protective factors did not explain variance in problem gambling beyond HEXACO traits and risk factors. However, in exploratory analyses, mindfulness and self-efficacy – both modifiable protective factors – moderated the relationship between high-frequency gambling (a key proximate antecedent of problem gambling) and problem gambling tendencies. These results suggest mindfulness and self-efficacy may serve as ‘buffers’ against the development of problem gambling issues and may be promising targets for clinical interventions.     

The Role of Sex-Related Alcohol Expectancies in Alcohol-Involved Consensual and Nonconsensual Sex Among Women of Asian/Pacific Islander and Women of European Race/Ethnicity

Alcohol-involved sexual experiences, including incapacitated sexual assault and alcohol-involved sex, are major public health concerns among college women. Further, racial/ethnic diversity among college students is increasing, particularly with regard to increases in college students of Asian/Pacific Islander (API) race/ethnicity. Of relevance, evidence suggests differences in sexual assault rates across ethnicities and cultures; however, no known study to date has examined differences by ethnicity and first language in expectancies and experiences specifically surrounding alcohol and sex. The current study sought to examine differences in incapacitated sexual assault, alcohol-involved sex, and heavy episodic drinking, as well as differences in sex-related alcohol expectancies among native English-speaking college women of European (EU) race/ethnicity, native English-speaking women of API race/ethnicity, and non–native English-speaking women of API race/ethnicity (NNES-API). EU reported higher frequency of heavy episodic drinking, alcohol-involved sex, and incapacitated sexual assault compared to API and NNES-API. In addition, API reported more frequent alcohol-involved sex and incapacitated sexual assault compared to NNES-API, in part due to API’s stronger endorsement of sexual disinhibition–related alcohol expectancies (indirect effects: β = ?.04, p = .04, and β = ?.07, p = .04, respectively). Findings highlight the important role of expectancies in acculturation and influence on actual alcohol-involved sex and sexual assault.     

Life,liberty, and property in slaves: white Mississippians seek ‘just compensation’ for their freed slaves in 1865

After the U.S. Civil War, a group of Mississippi politicians demanded that if their state abolished slavery and rejoined the Union the federal government must reimburse former slaveowners for the value of freed slaves. These politicians challenged the federal government’s authority to abolish slavery without ‘just compensation’ for their legally protected property. Though they failed, their allies and opponents alike believed Congress would compensate former slaveowners once Mississippi rejoined the United States. Their efforts are one chapter in a national story illustrating how white southerners attempted to defend their financial interests in slaves after wartime emancipation abolished slave labor.